Wednesday, February 27, 2008

NAS Lakehurst, NJ, Hangar #1 postcard

This is hangar #1 at the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The card says it is 224 feet tall, 966 feet long, and 350 feet wide.

It is a huge hangar. You can see it from miles around. A friend of mine who is a retired Air Force Pilot told me just after you fly away from the Air Force Base closest to New York City, once you are good and up in the air and straighten out you can see the hangar. Used to when I was station there New York was a 60 mile car ride. By the way crow flies, or a jet flies, it may be as little as 50 miles, and after you subtract the miles it took you to get up high and airborne, it may even knock it down to 40 or 45 miles…. that is still a long way to visually see the hangar.

It was also big enough to house the soon-to-explode German’s Zeppelin HINDENBURG, just outside its doors. I knew that, and so did everyone on base that has been there over 5 minutes, there were pictures all over the base of the HINDENBURG exploding into flames, May 6th 1937, at 7 pm. That was before my time.

Whenever we went someplace for the weekend, the big hangar looming over the trees as drove up was always a welcome sight. It meant “home away from home”.

Our Helicopter Detachment, Helicopter Utility Squadron Four (HU-4) was two hangars down, which I suppose was Hanger #3. It looked to be about 75% the size of Hangar #1.